Etihad’s ‘The Residence’ at the NYTimes Travel Show

For the past couple days, and until Sunday, I’m in New York City for the New York Times Travel Show. Hundreds of travel companies, tourism boards, airlines, and other travel-related folk come to NYC to pitch their offerings. Further, there are excellent training resources for bloggers. I’m here to network and learn, but most importantly, Etihad had a showing of ‘The Residence,’ which I have to say, is absolutely stunning.

The footprint of the entire “seat” (more like a cabin) is about a quarter the size of my apartment!

The first room, from where the main entry is located, is the living/dining room. There is sufficient seating, with a table, for four people. There’s also an obnoxiously big TV. The seat, although large, wasn’t actually that comfortable. I found it a little too hard. However, the design is incredible, and you do feel like you’re in a nice hotel.

To the side of the dining room is a hallway that leads to the bathroom, and to the bedroom. The bathroom is substantially smaller than the Emirates A380 shower room, however, it is tastefully designed and the shower is quite large.

The bedroom is pretty cool. You get a full bed that is sufficiently sized for two people. There’s a TV at the end of the bed, and my understanding is that you can have breakfast in bed, which again, is pretty cool.

After I left ‘The Residence’ one of the “flight attendants” (pretty sure they were actresses…) gave me an amenity kit, because somehow, I got a press pass. It’s a really beautiful kit – one of the nicest I’ve seen.

I really hope that one day ‘The Residence’ will be accessible using points, cause I sure ain’t as hell blowing $20,000+ dollars for it. It’s nice, but I feel like it’s way more than I would need.